Feb. 13, 2014

Several of the eight Corvettes at the bottom of a 40-foot sinkhole at the National Corvette Museum.

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Detroit Free Press Business Writer

Officials view a sinkhole that opened up in the Skydome showroom Wednesday at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Ky. Eight display cars were swallowed. / Miranda Pederson/Associated Press

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You can’t keep a Corvette down for long — even when it topples into a sinkhole.

General Motors announced Thursday that it will refurbish eight Corvettes swallowed by a 40-foot-wide sinkhole Wednesday at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Ky.

The museum is independently owned, operated and funded, but GM said it would rehab the eight fallen sports cars. The automaker plans to pay for any repairs that aren’t covered by insurance, while the museum is raising funds to repair its showroom.

“The vehicles at the National Corvette Museum are some of the most significant in automotive history,” GM global product chief Mark Reuss said in a statement. “There can only be one 1-millionth Corvette ever built. We want to ensure as many of the damaged cars are restored as possible so fans from around the world can enjoy them when the museum reopens.”

The museum owned six of the cars; GM owned two that were on loan. The sports cars were caught on camera falling into a sinkhole at least 25 feet deep. No people were injured.

GM global design chief Ed Welburn will oversee the project.

The automaker said it would send the damaged cars to the GM design department’s specialty shop in Warren, which cares for GM’s Heritage Collection of classic vehicles.

But there’s also a possibility that some of the cars won’t survive the sinkhole disaster.

“Our goal is to get all eight shipped to Warren, however, that is entirely dependent on whether we can get all cars out of the sinkhole — which at this point we do not know for sure. Some of the cars look to be in very good shape. However, other cars are completely buried in rubble, so it will likely be several weeks until we can get the cars out and assessed,” Chevrolet spokesman Monte Doran said in an e-mail.